The Advantages of Outsourcing vs. In-House Workers

When it comes to hiring either in-house workers or outsourcing talents, the decision is not an easy one for most companies. Of course, both have their own benefits and limitations. As the title suggests, however, we will be favoring outsourcing on this occasion.

Admittedly, there are various positives associated with hiring in-house employees. These benefits include being able to directly talk face-to-face with staff members, getting them to potentially complete tasks more efficiently, and even supporting the local community.

However, this article will be placing a particular focus on what advantages outsourcing has over going with traditional office workers. With it, you might discover that it is the best option for your particular business.

Hire the best of the best

If your talent pool is restricted to just the local area where your business resides, is this really going to provide you with the absolute best talent possible? Unless you land the employee jackpot, an in-house staff member – while most likely sufficient to complete the role required – is not going to be among the greatest talent available.

Yet, going the outsourcing route opens you up to essentially the world. From here, only your budget can limit you to acquiring the services of a freelancer. For instance, a graphic designer might be in short supply in your area, whereas there will be thousands of freelancers on-hand to complete your design work. Plus, the very best graphic freelancers will, by and large, have more skills than local in-house options.

While an individual freelancer is generally a fine pick, a specialist company is also a top choice. After all, it typically combines high-quality work with a well-known reputation for efficiency. For example, take an IT consulting firm. The Cognizant technology solutions consultancy is one of the most popular options existing with an array of tech-related services on offer, but there are various alternate firms that supply an equally great level of service overall. As a result, and as an alternative to going with a freelancer, you will never be short of a specialist company that can help with your outsourcing needs.

Ideal for short-term work

Do you have a short-term task that needs completing, but your current in-house staff doesn’t possess the relevant skills to complete it? Understandably, hiring a new employee would be a waste of resources if they are only needed for a relatively small portion of work.

Therefore, if you require a one-off specialist project to be completed, outsourcing is the perfect option in that regard. Freelancers and firms are typically always in a position to complete short-term work. Not only that, but they will often also be in a position to get started on your task straight away – there’s no need to conduct an extensive search or lengthy interviews. Ideally, you find the right person, have a quick chat about the task, hire them and then receive the work.

More inexpensive on the whole

Naturally, going with the outsourcing option is cheaper than hiring in-house – and quality is not compromised!

First of all, you can search around and enlist help from freelancers where your home currency is trading strongly against others around the world. Alternatively, you can also go with someone that resides in a less privileged country. They might be willing to work for less than a standard worker in your nation, but this doesn’t mean they can’t produce high-quality content that you would expect.

Another benefit is that you do not need to pay a standard wage. Instead via outsourcing, you have the ability to pay on a per-project basis. As well as being understandably more cost-efficient, paying this way helps you to plan ahead regarding your budget.

Oh, and remember additional employee-related costs such as dental/medical benefits and possibly a 401(k) plan? Well, these aspects are something that doesn’t have to be considered when outsourcing.

Less risk involved

In terms of risk, hiring an employee or team is something that could place your business in a perilous position when maintaining a successful profit. After all, having an additional in-house member of staff adds a sizeable chunk of expenditure to any annual bill. Also, that doesn’t even take into account that potential of other costs – such as purchasing new equipment – that needs to be taken into account with a new office hire.

Although this was partly touched upon on the short-term work section, you don’t need to have a constant period of workflow to suffice a new employee. You can outsource for certain projects at various times, while you also have the ability to scale up or down if you collaborate with a specialist firm.

Speaking of firms, if you gain the assistance of an IT consultant, you could also boost your security in certain cases. For example, if you let them take care of your company’s technology, they should provide the best in terms of defense against potential malware attacks.

Stay focused on the core business

If you are currently planning on making a new acquisition to your workforce, will the role you have open be part of your core business? To further clarify, will the role run alongside the main portion of your work, or will it only be a minor aspect on the whole?

If the answer to that question is the latter, the option of outsourcing is perhaps your best bet in that regard. This is because it allows you to stay focused on the core of your operations, and not have to dedicate a portion of your time/resources on something that you don’t specialize in.

To illustrate, creating and supporting your very own data center is rather unlikely to provide a competitive advantage if you don’t operate in the technology realm. As you don’t work in such a sector, this makes it tricky to hire a team and produce a data center of true quality. Instead, you could hire the services of an IT outsourcing firm, take advantage of their knowledge and skills, and let them take the hassle away from setting up a data center for your company.

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CASCADE BUSINESS NEWS

Cascade Business News (CBN), Central Oregon's business newspaper, is local and family-owned and operated by Jeff Martin. CBN is published the first and third Wednesdays of each month. CBN is a division of Cascade Publications Inc.